Information and support services for children aged 9 to 12 years: A mapping of services currently available in Norway

Introduction

Surveys among children in the 5th to 7th grade find that many children are doing well, but that some also struggle with bullying, loneliness, school refusal, difficult relationships with their parents and health problems. Often, children are also unsure of who to talk to when they are having a hard time. This report describes the second sub-study in a three-part study, where the overall aim of all the sub-studies is to produce knowledge about information and support services for children between 9 and 12 years of age in Norway. This knowledge will form part of the public sector's work to develop services to help children in the target group.

Objective

The purpose of the current study was to investigate information and support services for children aged 9-12 in Norway. The following questions were investigated: What is the current state of existing services? Who are the users? What do they want information about or help with? What do service providers think are the strengths and weaknesses of services for children aged 9-12?

Method

We mapped the kinds of services where children could contact the service themselves, as well as having some form of quality assurance (e.g. publicly available, non-commercial, competent providers etc.). In addition to relatively small voluntary/not-for-profit services, we also mapped public services where children could turn for help and information. This included the school health service, the school's counseling service and the municipal child welfare service. The mapping process consisted of 3 steps: 1) generating a list of services; 2) obtaining information about services; and 3) interviewing services. In Step 1, we started by creating a list of the relevant services, through online searches via search engines such as Google; through lists of quality-assured services (Ung.no, Helsenorge.no and The Norwegian Council for Mental Health); via suggestions from the commissioner, experts in the field and collaborators in the other sub-studies; and via reports and publications. In Step 2, we gathered information about services. We used the services' own websites and reports/publications. In many cases we had to contact the services for more information, either by phone or email. In Step 3, we conducted interviews with employees/representatives in the services about their views on the services' strengths and weaknesses, as well as any suggestions for improvements. We planned to conduct 10 interviews in a selection of services. In order to prioritize services, we used a three-stage prioritization where we first chose to focus on services that offered help (rather than information), then those services that were used most frequently by 9–12-year-olds, and finally the services that gave us information about areas of life that we had not covered in other interviews, such as sexuality and drugs. All participants were invited via e-mail or telephone. The interviews were conducted over the telephone and Teams. We used the SWOT framework as a starting point for the interview guide, which consists of questions about the service's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. All participants received a consent form and the interview material was stored on the Service for Sensitive Data (TSD). We used thematic analysis to identify themes related to the service providers' experiences of the service.

Results

We identified 38 services that children aged 9-12 could contact to receive help, guidance, advice or information. The majority of the services were digital help services, available via phone, chat, e-mail, SMS and other forms of contact. Four services offered both digital and analogue forms of contact. Three services were public non-digital services. Most were aimed at children and young people, but several were also aimed at all age groups. The majority of services covered three areas of life: 1) emotions, identity and falling in love; 2) family, friends and free time; and 3) body, health and society.

In several cases, we were unable to obtain information about the age group 9-12 years. However, the services that were used the most often, among those we could obtain reliable figures about, were the digital help services Kors på halsen, SnakkOmMobbing, PsyktÆrlig and SnakkOmPsyken. In addition, services such as Kirkens SOS, Sidetmedord and BARchat were used by many children and young people, but we were unable to confirm these services’ number of users aged 9-12.

A consistent finding in several services was that the majority of inquiries came from girls. Moreover, it seems that chat was the most common form of contact among the digital services. Services also gave us information about which questions and topics were most commonly mentioned by children. Certain services were more pointed in the topics they covered than others, but several themes nevertheless occurred across several services. Among these themes were mental health, relationships, substance abuse, sexuality and health, family problems, identity issues, self-esteem, violence, school problems and family issues.

Through interviews with 10 service providers who represented 11 services (one service provider was employed in two services), we found that some of the most central themes were anonymity and confidentiality. One of the most important advantages of the digital services, according to the service providers, was that children could talk openly without being recognized, so that they could raise difficult questions and talk freely about their problems. Service providers who worked in schools also mentioned confidentiality as an important prerequisite for contact with the children. Many also wanted services to be easily available for children. Physical accessibility was therefore seen as an advantage for school-based services, where health nurses and social workers were always nearby. Digital services that were either open 24 hours a day or that had long opening hours were also seen as beneficial for the availability of the services. Nevertheless, some service providers highlighted the lack of contact from groups such as children with minority backgrounds, language difficulties, and those who were exposed to violence and abuse. Staff competence was also highlighted as a strength. This included either professional background or solid training and guidance. A significant weakness in several services was the burden on the service providers, especially in long conversations about difficult topics while children waited in queues. Service providers who worked with chat identified both advantages and challenges with this format, where written communication could make it easier for some children to express themselves, while at the same time it could present obstacles to the service providers' understanding. Challenges with capacity and concerns about cutbacks were also mentioned by several providers. In addition, making the services more visible, especially the ones aimed at younger children, was considered necessary to increase accessibility. This could be achieved through marketing in relevant media channels such as TV programs and social media, while simultaneously adapting to the children’s needs.

Discussion

Based on the 38 services we surveyed, we have a good overview of which information and support services are available for children aged 9-12 in Norway. Although we cannot be sure that we have identified all services, we have probably covered the largest and most well-known, as well as a good number of smaller services with a narrower objective. Moreover, the thorough work of obtaining information from several sources (service providers, reports/publications, websites, interviews, etc.) has provided us with detailed information about the users and their needs. The findings from this sub-study can help to understand sub-study I to a greater extent and put these findings in a larger context. Among other things, our findings are a contrast to sub-study I in that most children seemed to prefer chat rather than telephone. On the other hand, our findings are similar to sub-study I in that most of the inquiries came from girls, without there being any good explanation for this tendency in the findings of either sub-study I or II. There were also several co-occurring findings in both sub-studies regarding emotional difficulties, family relationships, violence and abuse, and social relationships.

Conclusion

This study shows that there are several different services available for children aged 9-12 years in Norway. Children have many and complex needs, but we currently lack good first-hand knowledge of what they want from these services, what they think of them and what they think is missing from the services that currently exist.